Once there lived a man who boasted he could know everything and the two brother gods, Remembrance and Forgetfulness, punished him for his pride by taking him down to limbowhere nothing ever lives or ever diesand there they expanded his mind almost infinitely, and placed within it everything there is to knowThe position of every leaf on every tree,when and where that leaf would fall,knowledge of the tree when it was a sapling,a seed, and when it was a campfire,and then as ash, and to soil and back to a seed againWhat you had for breakfast yesterday, What you thought about the car accident you saw on the way to workand the ladybug stuck on the windshield of that carand what that ladybug had for breakfast yesterday . . .EVERYTHING there is to knowright down to the position and velocity of every single particle in the universethroughout the cone of timewhich you might think is impossibledue to Heisenburg's Uncertainty PrincipleBut somehow, he learned it Then they put him in a room with a bed, a table a chair and a locked door,and the two gods said unto him in their unison voice:“NOW YOU WILL LEARN THE BOON AND BANE OF REMEMBRANCE AND FORGETFULNESS!WE HAVE ONE LAST THING TO TEACH YOUTHE DOOR IS LOCKED AND WILL ONLY UNLOCK WHEN YOU HAVE FORGOTTEN ALL WE HAVE TAUGHT YOUONCE IT DOES YOU CAN OPEN IT AND GO ANYWHERE IN THE UNIVERSE AT ANY POINT IN TIME.”Then the gods vanished, leaving the man in his room aloneand the Man Who Knew Everything spent billions of years in this room,desperately trying to remember to forgetBut one memory he tried to write with his own blood on the wallsa memory he felt terrified to forgetHe tried to scratch all important words of the gods into his skinbut to his dismay he found that blood did not flow in Limbonor could he leave any mark on anythingHe tried the door millions of timesbut still it remained lockedand one day, after countless eons, the door finally unlockedDid the man ever escape the room?Was his fate was eternal?After he forgot the last thing that they taught himthat the door would only unlock after he forgot the last thing that they taught him,what could cause him to try the door a final time?Only after he forgot all that the gods taught himand then spent further eons forgetting that the door was locked all the times he tried it beforeWhen he happened to try the door one time in curiosityand it swung open and he went throughby then he had no knowledge of anywhere in the universe but his roomand that's exactly where it led and on a guess he decided to go to the room at the point in timewhen he first entered it billions of years before, though he had no memory of that time There he met the gods just after they decreed their cruel joke to his past selfand since the gods did not anticipate this,they became frightened and vulnerableFor the first time, the god Forgetfulness knew what it was to rememberand the god Remembrance knew what is was to forgetThe doomed men saw their one chanceWorking together, the two selves took hold of the godsthe past self grappling Remembrance,the the future self grappling Forgetfulnessand they threw the gods into each other, winking them out of existence forever freeing the universe from their pernicious gamesThen the Man Who Knew Everything and the Man Who Forgot EverythingExited the room together, and reintegrated into one and since the condition was now metsince now he had forgotten everything, and at the same time knew everythinghe was free to go anywhere in the universe at any time So he went back to his home and family and computerand finished keying in this story at 10:07 pm, February 21, 2018.

And the moral is:

If you punish yourself long enough to forget what you've done, then you're doomed to punish yourself forever. Yet if you always remember what you've done, you may likewise never cease to punish yourself. To forgive yourself you must learn to remember and forget simultaneously.